“Both models of integration are in crisis: they are no longer applied or understood in a clear-cut manner, and both countries are looking at each other to learn lessons and potentially modify the way in which they deal with minorities,” she told AFP.

Patrick Simon, an international migration and minorities expert at the French Institute for Demographic Studies, said the burkini debate was driving the impression that minorities, rather than the structure of French society, were the problem.

“There is a difficulty in the French integration model in accepting cultural and religious practices in the public domain,” he told AFP.